


(even if you miss) Land Among the Stars

by Nahiel



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, F/M, M/M, More tags to be added, Multi, Time Travel, WIP, more pairings to be added, possible shiro/allura/lance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-25
Updated: 2017-10-12
Packaged: 2019-01-05 06:27:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12184704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nahiel/pseuds/Nahiel
Summary: Lance has been fighting for what feels like forever.  He and Keith have lost so much, so many friends, but they still have each other.  Until... they don't, and everything's gone to hell, and Lance knows, he just knows that there is no chance they can win the war, not now.  Not anymore.And then, with the destruction of the other lions, he gets flung back in time, and a chance to do it all over again.  To save everyone, to change everything.He refuses to fail.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> You all know this quote, right?
> 
> "Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars."

 

Lance would have given his other eye to block the shot.

 

It went straight past him, stirring his hair as it went, and the pained cry behind him, choked off and desperate, told him everything he needed to know. He shot the bastard that did it, because duty came first, duty  _ always _ came first no matter who was dying, and kept shooting until everything in the hallway was down.

 

“It’s bad,” Coran said before Lance could even turn around.

 

Lance swallowed and tried to steel himself for what he’d see when he turned. And then he turned, and he let out a shuddering breath. There was no preparing himself for the sight of Keith, sprawled out on the ground, a massive chunk of his armor destroyed, blood seeping from the wound sluggishly. His eyes were half-closed, his breath coming in ragged pants.

 

Lance was on his knees beside him without even thinking about it. “It’s going to be okay,” he said, his voice shaking. He was telling them both that, convincing himself. If they could get him back to the castle immediately, if they could get him into a healing pod, then…

 

“We can’t go back,” Keith said, drawing in another ragged breath. “Lance, if we retreat, they’ll—” He coughed, and blood dotted his lips. “They’ll kill her, you know they will.”

 

Lance shuddered. “Then the others can go forward! Acxa could—”

 

“You’re not making it through their line of defense again, not without Voltron,” Kuron pointed out, his voice shaking.

 

Lance turned and shot a glare at the clone. “Don’t you dare tell me that we’re just giving up!”

 

Keith drew in another shuddering breath and lifted a shaking hand to turn Lance’s attention back to him. It left a smear of his blood on Lance’s cheek, but Lance didn’t care. “Lance,” he said, and coughed again. “We always knew it could end like this,” he breathed.

 

Lance stared back at Keith. He couldn’t… Keith couldn’t mean… “Keith,” he whispered, begging. “We can’t… don’t tell me to leave you,” he pled. “I can’t.”

 

“You have to,” Keith whispered. He tugged Lance down and kissed him, long and slow and sweet. “You have to save her. You have to save Allura.”

 

There was the sound of footsteps behind them, running, drawing ever closer. “We have to go now!” Acxa snapped. “Lance, I get it, but we’ve got to go!” There was the distinct sound of the yellow bayard firing, and Lance wanted nothing more than to tell her to fuck off, but she was right, damn it.

 

They’d come this far…

 

“Go,” Keith begged. “I love you, but go. Save Allura.”

 

“Lance!” Matt shouted, his voice broken. “We have to—”

 

“Okay!” Lance snapped. He leaned in, pressed his forehead to Keith’s. “I love you,” he whispered to him. “We’ll come back for you.” He kissed him again, knowing that it was going to be their last. He could hear the death rattle in Keith’s lungs and knew it was only a matter of time before it took him. 

 

“Take my lion,” Keith coughed out, his breath shuddering. “I love you so much. Win this fight, Lance.”

 

Lance closed his natural eye against the tears that were forming. “I will,” he whispered. “For you, Keith, and for Pidge and Hunk and Shiro, we’re gonna win this.”

 

Acxa fired another shot, then jumped back in time to avoid a spray of return fire. “We have to go!” she snapped again.

 

“Give me a gun,” Keith said. He struggled to sit up.

 

Lance helped him, and propped him up against a Galra’s corpse. He gave him a gun, and put another within his reach. “I love you,” he whispered again. He kissed Keith once more.

 

Keith kissed back, fierce and strong. “I love you too,” he choked out. Then he shoved Lance away. “Go!”

 

Lance went, even though it was the hardest thing he’d ever done. They had to save Allura; it was their only chance. Especially now that Keith was… but he might make it. They might make it back to him, and he might be fine.

 

He chanted that over and over in his head, until the shots behind them stopped firing and Matt had to stop to engage the Galra soldiers that were still pursuing them.

 

Keith wouldn’t have allowed any of them to pass. That meant…

 

Lance didn’t have time to dwell on it. “How much farther?” he asked Coran as they ran.

 

“We’re close!” Coran called back.

 

And then they found the cell where they’d last found Allura’s vital signs, and she was there. In the cell. Limp, in a pile, like she’d just been… discarded. Thrown there. Like trash.

 

“No,” Lance whispered. He reached for her, his hand shaking. For… for nothing? All of this had been for nothing? It couldn’t be. She had to be…

 

Coran was on his knees beside her, and now it was like watching what had just happened between him and Keith, and Lance couldn’t bear witness to that, for all that Coran had been like a father to her and Allura had been one of his closest friends.

 

“Wake up, Allura,” Coran was begging. “You have to wake up. We can’t make it out of here carrying you.”

 

“Coran,” Matt whispered. “Coran, she’s gone.”

 

“No!” Coran let out a sob. “She can’t be gone, she’s all I’ve got left!”

 

“We can’t stay,” Acxa said. She looked at Lance. “They’re right behind us; we have to go if we’re going to have a shot at getting out of here.”

 

Lance didn’t want to to be the one to make this decision. He wasn’t the leader! Except…  _ Take my lion _ . He was the leader. Keith had asked him to be, it had been his dying wish, and Lance already couldn’t do half of it because Allura was dead. So…

 

“Kuron,” he said hoarsely. “Get Coran. We have to go.”

 

Kuron hauled Coran to his feet, and Coran fought, but he was no match for the clone and his Galra arm. “What’s the best way out of here?” he asked, even as he kept Coran from dropping back to the ground.

 

“I don’t know; I was never on this ship,” Acxa said. “And we’re not getting back out the way we came in.”

 

Lance closed his eye, then sighed. He slipped off his right eye patch, revealing the bionic eye that had taken the place of his original. He went to the nearest console and used the eye to seamlessly enter the Galra systems. It was the best thing that Pidge and Hunk had ever made, and he remembered them every time he used it.

 

It was through their creation that he found all the data he could about the ship itself, and made it out of the system before the ship’s security systems could acknowledge the brief.

 

There was a map in his head, now, and he knew the way to go. “Let’s go!” he snapped, and started to run. If they were lucky, they’d make it back to the lions before they could be killed.

 

He didn’t remember much of the race back to the lions, to be honest. It was all a grief-stricken blur. Keith was dead. Allura was dead. They were joining Hunk and Pidge and the countless other allies they’d lost along the way.

 

Zarkon had them on the run, had always had them on the run, and it was only a matter of time before… before it was over. It felt like the loss was inevitable, and Lance knew that it was only because he’d just lost… because Keith… 

 

No matter how inevitable, they wouldn’t give up. They wouldn’t stop fighting. They would win this.

 

And then they were back at the lions, and he had the Black Lion, which meant that Red was losing her pilot, and… “Fuck,” he snarled. “Kuron, see if Red will take you!”

 

Kuron didn’t argue, and climbed into the lion. She lit up, which was the best news they’d had all day. The others scrambled into their lions, Matt to green and Coran to blue, just in time for the Galra foot soldiers to blast their way into the hangar where they’d landed the lions.

 

Lance didn’t hesitate to jump into the Black Lion. He scrambled in and the lions were taking off, with or without their pilots’ consent. They made it into open space, only to find the fleet of Galra ships waiting for them.

 

“What happened in there!” Lotor’s voice was tinny and staticy from the Castle, whose shields Lance could just barely see through the mass of ships. “Are you out yet? What’s going on?”

 

“We’re out,” Lance said, his voice hoarse. “We’re out. Allura was dead when we got there, and we lost… we lost…”

 

“Keith’s dead,” Acxa interrupted. “And we need to go, or we’re going to be dead too!”

 

The Galra ships were firing, now, and she was right. “Let’s go!” Lance shouted. He dove headfirst into battle.

 

Once upon a time, he might have laughed at the pun. As it was… he was pretty sure that whatever sense of humor he’d had had been beaten out of him a long time ago.

 

“There’s some kind of monster flying around out here,” Lotor was saying. “The castle’s defenses are keeping him at bay for now, but I think you’re going to need Voltron to make it back.”

 

Of course they would. And… the fleet of ships would be easier to deal with if they were Voltron, since there was no way they could break through as individual lions. Just like Kuron had pointed out earlier.

 

He’d always wanted to say it, but now the words tasted like ash in his mouth. “Form Voltron!” he commanded.

 

They started to follow the order, but something… something happened. Something went wrong.

 

Lance might never know what it was, but there was a bright flash of light that he couldn’t explain, and then they were exploding outwards, away from the ship. He thought maybe the light had come from the ship, but he wasn’t sure. Nothing made sense.

 

He saw shards of dust, like glitter, surrounding him, suspended in space with him, and he realized with mounting horror that it was the remnants of the lions. He looked past the shattered lions, in the direction of the castle, just in time to see the shields wink out, and for another massive explosion to tear in his general direction.

 

“Guys?” he said weakly, even though he knew there was no one left to answer.

 

And then the shockwave hit him, and he felt a flash of pain the likes of which he’d never imagined, searing and hot and burning like starfire, and everything went black.

 

ooOOooOOoo

 

He woke up slowly, to the sound of strange voices in his ear.

 

“Launch seems to be going well. How are you guys feeling out there?”

 

And then Kuron responded with, “We’re doing good. On course for Kerberos within the next six months.”

 

Lance’s eyes flew open. Earth. He could see Earth. He was… he was in Earth’s space? What the—

 

“Good to hear, Shiro! Keep us updated; let us know if you find anything interesting out there. Mission control out.”

 

Kerberos? Was he… was that… Shiro? And not… not Kuron? Who’d tried so hard, who was such a good person, but who wasn’t  _ Shiro _ , had never been Shiro…

 

He could save him. If that was Shiro, if this was really… then he could… he could save him and Matt and Sam. He could save Pidge and Hunk, and nothing would ever… they could…  _ Keith _ . Keith was still alive, and he could…

 

He could fix everything.

 

He could make sure that Shiro and Matt and Sam never got captured, and Pidge never joined the Garrison, and Keith never went to space, and then he would live on Earth for the rest of his life and would never… he would never die in Lance’s arms, and…

 

Lance raised a shaking hand to his face to rest over his bionic eye.

 

The universe would never have Voltron. There would never be a chance of defeating the Galra, because they… for all that things had gone wrong, they’d done it. They’d been the ones to take on the roles of being Paladins, and yes, there had been Acxa and Kuron and Matt, but would Allura and Coran have ever woken up if they hadn’t found her? Would Kuron or Matt ever even have the chance to be Paladins?

 

“Oh, god,” Lance whispered. He leaned forward, resting his head against the weary, war-torn Black Lion’s command console. “I don’t know what to do,” he whispered to her.

 

She wasn’t like Blue, or Red, and only just barely responded to him. But that response was warmth and certainty, and Lance knew that she was right. As much as he hated the idea of it, he had to let Shiro and Matt and Sam be captured.

 

It was the only way to guarantee that things worked out even remotely similarly to the way they had when they’d first formed Voltron. When it had been him and Keith and Shiro and Hunk and Pidge, and everything had seemed so bright, so… so  _ possible _ . He could change other things,  _ would _ change other things, but that? That had to happen, as far as he could tell.

 

And if not, he had time to decide. “Right girl?” he whispered. Because he had the Black Lion, and it would take Shiro six months, at least, to reach Kerberos. He had six months to figure out what needed to stay the same in this timeline, if he’d really gone back in time.

 

If he wasn’t dreaming.

 

God, Lance hoped this wasn’t just a dream he was having right before he died. This was his second shot, and he was determined not to waste it.

 

If this was real, he was going to save the whole damned universe, and he was going to do it right this time. Zarkon wouldn’t know what hit him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...hello new fandom. Hello new friends. 
> 
> I have no idea where this is going or how often it will update, but you have my current friend to blame for me posting it this early on. She egged me on, and I regret nothing.


	2. Chapter One

 

Lance still wanted to go after the mission to Kerberos, to make sure that Shiro and Matt and Sam would be okay, but…

 

He knew that he couldn’t.  If he did, he would ruin the timeline, and for all that Lance intended to change the way that things had gone, he knew that changing things  _ that _ much would only result in trouble.  Would only result in nobody being ready when the Galra eventually did find Earth.

 

He shivered and forced the memory of that disaster away.  “Well, where do you think we should wait?” he asked the Black Lion, needing to distract himself.

 

There was a sense of longing from her, but nothing more definite than that.  Lance knew what she wanted, and he knew that there was no way he could grant her wish.  “I think they’re gone, buddy,” he whispered.  He stroked a gentle hand over her console, like he was petting her, and got a flare of sorrow in response.  “I think that it’s just you and me, for all that there should be another set of Lions here.”

 

He got a flare of discontent in return for that phrase, and he couldn’t help the small smile that appeared.  “I know, beautiful.  They just won’t be the same, will they?”  They wouldn’t have lived through the same things that Lance and the Black Lion had, and so they wouldn’t understand them.  And, besides, they would have their own Lance, and their own Black Lion.

 

He hoped.  God, what if the Black Lion that he had took the place of the one in the palace?  That would be awful to try and explain, but he would do it if he had to.  

 

Of course, it wouldn’t be an issue for another year and a half, if not slightly longer.  And until then, there were so many things he could do.  “We could go and work with some of the smaller rebellions, try uniting them the way that Matt was doing when we found him,” he suggested.

 

There was an immediate, negative response to the idea, and Black started to drift down into Earth’s atmosphere.

 

“Hey!” Lance protested.  He sat up and took the controls, but she wasn’t listening to them.  “That’s not fair!  I don’t want to hang out on Earth for a year and a half while trying not to disrupt the timeline!”

 

The feeling that he got from Black was hard to put into words, but it basically felt an awful lot like he imagined the phrase ‘deal with it’ might feel.  “Bitch,” he muttered, resisting the urge to sulk.  “If you think we should hang out on Earth, that’s fine, but I want it noted that I disagree.”

 

There was a flash of amusement from Black, and she continued her lazy descent to Earth.  Lance just hoped that they weren’t being picked up on any sensors.  He didn’t think they’d been good enough to sense a Lion, but he couldn’t be sure.

 

He leaned back in the chair and considered what staying on Earth for the next year and a half would mean for him.  On the one hand, it would be frustrating to be stuck in such a technologically inferior society, but on the other hand…. on the other hand, he’d never made it back to Earth in his timeline.  The last time he’d seen his home planet had been over twenty years ago, except for the time that…

 

No.  He wasn’t thinking about it, because it would never happen.  And if it did happen, if Zarkon found out where they were from and sent a fleet to Earth, well, Lance supposed he could just make sure that Earth would be able to defend itself.

 

He knew that Allura and Coran had always been nervous about gifting technology to undeveloped races, but… if it would save Earth…

 

Then again, was Earth really ready for Altean levels of technology?  Probably not, which meant that giving it to them was likely a terrible idea.

 

Lance groaned and buried his head in his hands.  “This is so frustrating,” he muttered, and blinked to try and pretend like his vision wasn’t getting blurry, like he wasn’t about to cry.  “Why couldn’t someone else have been the one sent back?” he asked.  “Someone who was actually smart?  Like… Like Matt.  He would have been amazing.”

 

And then maybe he might have been able to see Keith again.  Once he was dead.  They could have been…

 

No.  Stop.

 

He drew in a shuddering breath and dashed the tears from his eye.  Now wasn’t the time to cry; it was the time to work out a battle plan.  He could cry later, when everything was in place and he’d saved the universe.  Duty first.

 

Always, always, duty first.

 

ooOOooOOoo

 

While he was distracted figuring out his next steps, Black was deciding where they were going to land.  At first, Lance thought that he might have to worry about her deciding to land in a crowded population center, but she was much smarter than that.  

 

When she let him out, it was into a very familiar cave, with a very familiar lion waiting, wrapped in a familiar blue shield.  Lance let out a shuddering sigh at the sight of her.  “Hello, beautiful,” he murmured, and touched the shield in question.

 

It rippled beneath his fingertips, like it was going to give way, then firmed up once more.  “Yeah, I know,” he said tiredly.  “I’m not your Paladin.  I’m not quite the right Lance for you.  But he’ll be here, don’t you worry.  And you two will be great together, and I’ll make sure that you never have to give him up if you don’t want to.”

 

Shiro always had been the best leader they’d had.  He felt a bit guilty for thinking it, but he knew that Keith would have agreed with him, would have ceded power to the real Shiro once again if he’d ever shown up.

 

But he hadn’t.  They’d gotten Kuron instead, who was amazing, but was no Shiro.  At least this time around, Lance would hopefully be able to make sure that the real Shiro never disappeared in the first place.  If he had his say, the battle in question was never going to happen, and if it did, Shiro would be much closer to the Black Lion.

 

Of course, that wouldn’t be for at least two, maybe three years.  He thought.  It was hard to remember how long they’d had to be Paladins together, when he’d been fighting for twenty years.

 

He sighed and hefted the small bag he’d taken from Black up onto his shoulders.  He wouldn’t even be able to go back to space until he was going with everyone else, at least if he was to listen to the feelings he was getting from Black.  She didn’t seem inclined to go anywhere for the moment, and he didn’t have the same bond with her that he’d had with Red, or even with Blue.  He couldn’t make her do anything she didn’t want to, and doubted his ability to change her mind.

 

Lance sighed again.  “I’ll be back,” he said quietly to the two Lions.  Black, his Black, battle-scarred and weary, was pressed as close to Blue’s shield as she could be, and her own shield shimmered into place at Lance’s words.  She seemed to let out a tired sigh, and then she curled up, and Lance watched as she seemed to go to sleep.

 

“Rest well, ladies,” he murmured.  He hitched his bag further up on his shoulder, turned, and began to make his way out of the caves.  He didn’t know where he was going, or what he was going to do for a year and half, other than mourn the friends he’d left behind and the lover he’d never see again, but he supposed he had plenty of time to figure it out.

 

ooOOooOOoo

 

It felt so strange to wander with no real goals in mind while he knew what was going on in the sky above him.  People were fighting, dying for their freedom, or had mostly given up on ever attaining it, and here he was, selling fish in a market to get some money for the next town he was going to drift in the general direction of.

 

It all felt so pointless.

 

Not that it wasn’t amazing to be back on Earth for the first time in twenty years, but… it just…  Lance sighed, but plastered a smile onto his face and continued to trying to sell the damned fish.  He needed twenty, thirty more bucks before he could skip out to the next town, and damn if he wasn’t determined to make it that day.

 

Clearly he’d been there too long if he was angsting again.

 

He’d passed a month like this, moving from town to town, working meaningless job after meaningless job, drifting in some general direction he couldn’t even really decide on.  At nights, when he was lonely enough to truly hate having been the only one to survive the explosion, he went and hid in whatever room he was staying in and cried himself to sleep.

 

Some nights, he was too lonely even for that.  It was hard to sleep without Keith by his side.  Twenty years they’d been together, twenty long years looking after each other, taking care of each other, loving each other, and now…

 

Now Lance was alone.  He would always be alone.

 

“Melodramatic,” he muttered to himself, and focused on the sale he was in the middle of.

 

It was fine.  Everything was fine.  He would be fine; he just had to figure out some kind of direction, that was all.  But selling fish, it was a fine job.  

 

Until it wasn’t.  Until he was staring at his next customer with a wide eye and a breaking heart, because that… she… she was his sister, unless he was very mistaken.  And it was likely that he could be, given that he could barely remember what any of his family members looked like.  Twenty years of war and fighting would do that to a person, after all.

 

He knew it was creepy, but the market was closing down for the afternoon and so, as discreetly as he could, Lance followed her home.  Admittedly, he probably wasn’t very discreet.  He was a man with an eyepatch over one eye, after all, and those kind of stood out.  But she didn’t call the cops on him, didn’t even seem to notice him, and he only felt a little guilty as he followed her…

 

Because when she arrived at her home, Lance knew that it was his home.  The one he’d grown up in, with all of his siblings, and he couldn’t stop the choked off sob that escaped him.  They were here.  They were alive, and Lance had never gone missing on them, and if there was one thing he regretted as much as losing Keith, it was that he’d never made it home to tell them that he was okay before Earth had been… before Zarkon had…

 

The worst thing about what Zarkon had done was that Lance had known it was coming.  Every Paladin had, and they’d done everything in their power to stop it.  But by the time they’d made it to Earth, it was too late.  The sight of Zarkon firing on Earth, helplessly defenseless in the face of Galran technology, was one that Lance would never forget, and would give his arm to make sure never happened again.

 

He made himself turn around and walk away before anyone living in the house, any of his family members, could see him and be frightened by him.  He only let himself go back for two more days, only let himself dream of going up to his mother and hugging her and telling her how much he loved her, for two more days, because if he let himself do it for any longer, he knew that he would never be able to stop.  

 

He would go through with it, he would approach them and probably terrify them in the process, and do who knew what to the timeline, and it would do no good in the end.

 

He left on the second day, not just their house but the town in general, hopping on the first flight out.  He couldn’t keep drifting like this.  It wasn’t good for him, he knew it wasn’t.  He needed to find something more productive to do with himself, because if he didn’t… 

 

Who knew what kind of trouble he’d get himself into while wandering the Earth?  He still had more than a year left, closer still to the year and a half he’d initially had.  And yes, he could lose himself in despair for a year and half, because he’d certainly earned that right, but…

 

But Keith wouldn’t want that.  Duty came first, always.  And that included when there was no obvious duty to be done.  Because that just meant he needed to find something.  And seeing his family again, being so viscerally reminded of everything he’d lost when Earth fell to Zarkon, it gave him an idea of what to do with his time for the next year or however long he had left.

 

The only question was, how was he going to get the Garrison to believe that he was a suitable candidate to teach combat flying?

 

ooOOooOOoo

 

Less than a month later, Lance let out a shuddering sigh as he presented his ID card.  It should hold up, he’d definitely paid enough that if it didn’t he was going to be pretty pissed, but there was always a chance…

 

But it did, and the secretary waved him through to speak with Commander Iverson without any complaint.

 

Lance went in and settled in at the chair across from Commander Iverson’s desk.  It was amazing how very not frightening the man was, considering that when Lance had been a cadet, he’d been the stuff of nightmares.

 

“So,” the Commander said, flipping a file closed.  “You’re the janitor who keeps messing around on our flight simulators.”

 

Lance put on his best arrogant expression.  “What can I say?” he said.  “Once a pilot, always a pilot.  It’s hard to just not play with them when it’s the only way I’ll ever get to fly again.”  He tapped the patch over his eye, like it had ever done anything to keep him from flying.  Like it didn’t help him when he was in the Lions, but it wasn’t like Commander Iverson would know anything about that.   
  


Iverson let out a small, considering noise.  “You know,” he said slowly, opening Lance’s file up once more.  Lance knew exactly what it said, because he’d paid good money to have all the information added to that file.  “We’ve been a bit short staffed on flight instructors lately.  It wouldn’t be the same as flying combat missions like you used to, and it wouldn’t pay as well, but it would pay better than being a janitor and we’d stop yelling at you for using the simulators in your spare time.”

 

“You think I have something these kids should be learning?” Lance asked.  He did, he knew he did, but he couldn’t just come out and say that.  He had to make Iverson think it over, make him see Lance’s value.

 

It took a few minutes of consideration before Iverson leaned back in his chair.  “I think that you’ve got more to teach them than you think you do.  I think some of these kids are too damn eager to see combat, and would do well to learn from someone who actually lived it.  What do you say, Laith Leónegro?” 

 

Lance closed his eye and thought about it, or rather, pretended like he was considering the matter.  Then he opened his eye, smiled, and offered his hand to Commander Iverson.  “It would be a pleasure, Commander.”

 

The Commander took it, and they shook.

 

Well.  Lance could spend the next year and change keeping an eye on his younger self, and making sure that the timeline stayed as intact as possible.

 

And he was close to Black, which… definitely felt better than wandering the world had, so that was something.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And, from here on out, old!Lance will be referred to as Laith. Not only is it a combination of Lance and Keith, but it also apparently is an Arabic name for boys that can mean lion, strong, or brave (at least according to Google). His new last name should be pretty obvious if you have even a rudimentary grasp of Spanish.
> 
> The name change is to cut down on confusion for all of you, my dear readers, and also because I absolutely refuse to ever write a story with two main characters who share a name ever again. Of Wands and Staves was fun, but it killed me.


	3. Chapter Two

Laith’s first day as an instructor was… well, it was weird.  He saw so many half-remembered faces that he felt like a walking case of déjà vu, especially since he could barely remember who any of those faces belonged to.

 

There were a few that seemed to stand out as relatively memorable, but one…

 

Laith had to do a double take when he spotted him for the first time, just before he walked into his first class of the day.  Yes, the mullet was an old, familiar hairstyle, for all that he hadn’t worn his hair like that in years, but the expression on his face…  Laith couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen his Keith, his tired and half-broken Keith, with a genuine smile on his face.  It had probably been… what, back before they’d lost the real Shiro in that awful, ill-fated battle against Zarkon?

 

God, had it been that long?

 

Seeing him smile like that, it was almost enough for Laith to turn around and walk away from the Garrison, grab the Black Lion, and go rescue Shiro before he could even be captured.  If there was even still time for that.  He’d lost track of time when he’d been wandering, and now he didn’t really know how much time he had, exactly, until the date of the Kerberos mission failure.

 

He could look up when the mission had launched, but…

 

Well, there was a part of Laith that hoped that he would completely forget that it was coming so that he could honestly say that he hadn’t expected it when the news hit the Garrison.  It would just make his life so much easier if he could be genuinely surprised, not that he thought he’d be that lucky.

 

With some effort, he forced his thoughts away from the impending crisis.  He instead drew in a deep breath, closed his eye to focus on himself, on his confidence, on portraying a calm and eager instructor, and stepped into the classroom.  It was the first time he was going to be teaching, after all, and he had to appear to be all the things he was.

 

Without appearing to be any of them, of course, because he couldn’t exactly show off his badass battle skills to a bunch of Garrison recruits.  They wouldn’t even know what they were supposed to be fighting.  It would be an absolute nightmare.

 

“Good afternoon, cadets,” Laith said, letting his voice carry over the assembled cadets, all sitting at their desks.  Keith, as top of the class, was sitting in the very front, a notebook out and ready for him to take notes in.  It took every bit of effort Laith had in him to not meet his eyes, and to instead focus on scanning over the rest of the class.

 

“My name is Instructor Leónegro, and I’m going to be taking over as one of your flying instructors for the remainder of the semester.”  He offered them all one of his most bland smiles, hoping that he came off as neither threatening nor too friendly.

 

He certainly didn’t manage to be threatening, because one of the cadets called out, “Weren’t you the janitor, like, yesterday?”

 

And another chimed in with, “Yeah, pretty sure I saw you cleaning up one of the engineering student’s puke the other day.”

 

Laith smiled again, this time letting some of his normal, occasionally threatening personality seep into it.  It had the benefit of shutting up both candidates before he said, “I was, yes,” still with that same thin smile.  “But only because they didn’t let me fly combat missions anymore, due to my combination of PTSD and a missing eye.”

 

He didn’t actually know if he had PTSD, since he’d never bothered to visit a therapist, but it wouldn’t surprise him.  It wasn’t like he was in the best shape, mentally, given the vivid nightmares he had almost every night and the way that he could still remember things like the smell of the Galra’s blast as it went past his head and into Keith’s stomach.

 

He fought that memory down and instead studied the notes in front of him, provided by Commander Iverson for his first handful of classes.  “But if we’re done questioning my qualifications, can anyone explain to me why it isn’t advised to fly in loops when exiting the atmosphere?”

 

There was a moment of silence, and then, as Laith watched with some amusement, hands were raised throughout the classroom, Keith’s included.  Laith fought back the urge to call on him, to hear his voice, and instead picked a girl at random from the back of the room.

 

He made it through the class, but it was difficult.  He wasn’t sure if he’d actually be able to handle working at the Garrison, but at least here he could keep an eye on things.  Make sure it was going as it should be so that this timeline’s Paladins could find the Blue Lion when they were supposed to.

 

He could do this.  And the thing that would help him through it was that this Keith, and this Lance, and this everyone, would never go through the things that he had.  They would win this war long before they could lose anything, or anyone.

 

And if Keith had to go through a little grief when Shiro disappeared, well, it was better than the terrible grief he’d experienced when they’d realized that the real Shiro was never coming back, that he’d died in that battle against Zarkon, and Kuron was just a pathetic attempt at infiltration.

 

Not that Kuron was pathetic, and Laith mentally apologized to the clone for implying that he was.  Kuron was awesome.  He just wasn’t very good at pretending to be Shiro, that was all.

 

Either way, it wasn’t going to happen this time.  Laith would do everything in his power to stop it.

 

ooOOooOOoo

 

And then he was in the cafeteria, eating lunch, and he heard a laugh that might have once been familiar.  It was bright, cheerful… all the things that Laith generally wasn’t.  When he turned to find the source of the laughter, he found himself looking at… himself.

 

Himself, with both eyes intact, laughing like he didn’t have a care in the world, hanging off of… off of…

 

Laith drew in a deep, shaky breath, and averted his eyes.  Hunk was… had been…

 

He’d died saving the Balmerans, and Laith would never, ever forget the way that he’d gone down fighting.  How could he? He’d seen the whole damn thing.  He’d been there, fighting with him, doing his damndest to keep as many of the Balmerans alive as he could.  It had been a disaster, a rout in Zarkon’s favor, but he and the other Paladins had done everything they could.

 

And then Hunk had screamed, had fallen, had died in the healing pod, because there were some things that a healing pod just couldn’t fix, and apparently a hole, even a small one, that went straight through the heart was one of those things.  Then they’d been down a Yellow Paladin, at least until Acxa had walked away from Lotor and the Lion had responded to her.

 

It had taken forever, and as much as he grew to like Acxa, and Lotor when he followed her, he never had gotten over the fact that she’d replaced the man who’d been his brother in all but blood.

 

Laith forced himself to tear his eye away.  Staring at the students would just look weird, especially since he’d only just started as a faculty member.  And, besides, they didn’t know him.  It didn’t just look weird, it was actively weird.

 

“You gotta watch out for that one,” Iverson said, plunking his tray down across from Laith.

 

“Beg pardon?” Laith turned to him, a bit startled.  He hadn’t even heard the man approach, which was odd.  Normally people didn’t manage to get the drop on him, not anymore.  Not after twenty years of fighting a losing war.

 

“Lance,” Iverson clarified, nodding behind Laith.  “You have to watch out for him.  He’s too clever to be a cargo pilot, but too impulsive to be anything but, and it burns him up that he’s not going to get the chance to be anything else.”

 

“Ah.”  Laith looked down, a small smile appearing on his face.  Too clever to be a cargo pilot, too impulsive for anything else?  Yeah, that sounded like him at that age.  He’d thought he’d known everything, and God hadn’t he had a rude wakeup call when the war had begun?

 

“He and his roommate, Hunk, like to sneak out at night.  They think we don’t know, because we’ve never caught them, but we know.”  Iverson snorted and took a bite of his sandwich.  He chewed, swallowed, and said, “That doesn't help us catch them, mind you.  But we know.”

 

Laith couldn’t help the small snort that escaped him, the closest thing to a laugh he had in him anymore.  “So, what, you just let them get away with it?”

 

Iverson shrugged.  “Until they cause trouble, sure,” he said.  “Keeps them out of other kinds of trouble, which is all we can ask for with cadets like those two.”

 

It was interesting, hearing the instructor’s side of things.  Once upon a time, he’d genuinely thought he and Hunk had been successful in their sneaking about.  It was… sort of funny, knowing the truth about it.  He wondered if it had been true in his timeline, or if he had joined an entirely new timeline with entirely new circumstances.

 

The thought, sudden like being hit in the face by a Galran drone, was terrifying.

 

What if he was in a new timeline, and things didn’t progress the way he remembered?  Then what would he do?

 

And with him here, as an instructor, he might not even notice any differences…

 

Laith finished his food slowly, the food tasting like ash in his mouth.  He tried to push the thoughts aside as baseless worries, anxiety that needed an outlet and was just choosing stupid thoughts as said outlet, but he couldn’t do it.

 

What if he was in some weird timeline where Shiro never returned to Earth and Voltron was never formed?  What then?

 

ooOOooOOoo

 

That night, Laith settled at the desk in the room provided for instructors and opened up a blank notebook.  He’d bought it only an hour ago, with the half-formed idea of writing down everything he could remember about the war in his timeline, so that maybe, just maybe, he could keep all the terrible things from happening.  He should have started the project earlier, but it hadn’t occurred to him.  He’d been too lost, too uncertain of what he was going to do, too lost in grief to even entertain the notion of revisiting such terrible memories.

 

Ideally, the process of writing it all out should help jog his memory, too.  There were things that he’d forgotten, things from before he’d lost his eye, that were probably pretty damn significant.  He just… couldn’t remember them, in favor of the absolute shitstorm that had come after them.  Probably, anyway.

 

And, if in the process he remembered things about his time in the Garrison, things that didn’t seem like they were working out the same way, he could make note of those too.  It wasn’t a foolproof way of making sure that he was in a timeline that would work like his own had, but then, there was no such way, and nothing he could do about it even if he wasn’t.

 

It was all he could do, try to remember things and keep the timeline as intact as he could until such time as Voltron was formed.  And then, and then, Lance was going to change the universe.  Once Voltron was together, once the Paladins had taken up their mantle, he would make sure that Zarkon never saw them coming.

 

He put his pen to paper and started to write, going all the way back to the beginning, when Shiro had crashed the Galran ship on Earth.  Who knew what would turn out to be significant?

 

ooOOooOOoo

 

Time passed, as it tended to do, and Laith grew more accustomed to his role as instructor.  He managed to keep himself from staring too much at Keith, at Lance, at Hunk, and did a fairly decent job of teaching kids how to fly the clunkers that Earth called spaceships.

 

And then, before Laith knew it, six months had passed since his return to Earth, and the Kerberos mission was reported as lost.


	4. Chapter Three

Laith had never imagined how hard it would be to stay silent, to keep his mouth shut and watch as Keith imploded.  Or exploded, given the nature of his outbursts.  The first time Laith heard about Keith fighting with a student, it was hours after the fact, when Keith wasn’t in his class that day.  When he asked after him, students filled him in on the story.

 

Keith had punched someone who’d said that Shiro had probably made a mistake and lost the ship, stranding everyone on Kerberos.  He’d punched him so hard that he broke the other kid’s nose, which, if Laith was being honest, he could totally empathize with that.  Shiro had been the Garrison’s best pilot, and would never have lost the mission by making a mistake.

 

Laith couldn’t even remember a time during which Shiro had made a mistake piloting the Black Lion, at least, not until his last, fatal mistake.  But that wasn’t going to happen this time, he reminded himself, and focused on teaching his class for the day.

 

When it let out, he went to see Commander Iverson, who looked as tired as Laith felt.  Everyone seemed more subdued than normal, and Laith didn’t think it was a coincidence that the depressed aura formed immediately after the Kerberos mission was lost.

 

He hadn’t remembered it, but now that he was living it again, he could vaguely remember a time when everything had just seemed so much darker than it once had.  And he knew that it coincided with the Kerberos loss, which only made sense.  It had been one of the Garrison’s first manned missions that far out, after all.

 

“How were the kids today?” Iverson asked him, putting his pen down at the sight of him.  The question jarred Laith from his thoughts of this time in his timeline, and into this time in the current timeline.

 

He shrugged and entered the office.  “As good as can be expected, I guess.”  He hesitated, then ventured, “I heard something about a fist fight?”

 

Iverson groaned and buried his head in his hands.  “Yeah, you did,” he muttered.  “Fuck, that kid’s gonna be the death of me.  I get that he’s pissed about Shiro, because they were close, but I can’t just let him go around punching other kids, especially when they’re just making idle conversation.”

 

Laith nodded along with Iverson.  “That makes sense,” he agreed.  “Things would get out of hand if you were to let everyone punch anyone they felt like.”

 

Iverson rolled his eyes.  “I just don’t know what I’m going to do with him,” he muttered.  “He’s the best in the class, but I honestly don’t see his issues with Shiro’s disappearance getting any better.”

 

Laith frowned.  “That’s not—”  He stopped himself.  Keith hadn’t gotten kicked out that early, had he?  Surely it had taken longer than that, hadn’t it?

 

Iverson nodded, though.  “No, it’s not fair,” he agreed.  “Which is why he’s not getting kicked out right away.  We’re going to get him talking to the counselor, see if he can recommend a course of action or help him get his head on straight.  But if it doesn’t work out…”  Iverson shook his head.

 

“You’d throw him out for fighting?” Laith asked.

 

Iverson glanced at him sharply.  “We wouldn’t want to,” he said slowly.  “And it wouldn’t be my first choice, but it might come to that, I suppose.”  He shrugged.  “Keith’s not the only one having issues with the disappearance, of course.  Matt Holt was well-liked, and so was Sam Holt.  I have no doubt we’ll see some blowback from friends of theirs as well.”

 

Laith leaned back in his chair, balancing so that only two legs were on the ground.  “Sounds like it’s about to get more lively around here,” he muttered.

 

Iverson snorted.  “For a given value of the word,” he said.  “Personally, I could have done without this kind of excitement, myself.  I would have much rathered get word of a successful landing so that we could be celebrating instead of mourning.”

 

Laith flushed.  “I didn’t mean—”

 

Iverson waved him off.  “I know what you meant.”  He picked up his pen again.  “Keep an eye on Keith when he’s in your class, would you?  Just… try to make sure that if he snaps again, he doesn’t hurt anyone.  He’s the best in his class, very well trained.  He could probably do a lot of damage.”

 

Iverson had no idea.  But then again, this Keith wasn’t his Keith, and probably didn’t know three ways to kill someone with just his pinky finger.

 

“Can do,” Laith said.  He got up, recognizing the dismissal for what it was, and left the office.  Keep an eye on Keith?  He could definitely do that.

 

It wasn’t until he’d left that he realized he’d missed a shameful opportunity to make a pun about only having the one eye to use.

 

ooOOooOOoo

 

Laith was walking back to his classroom in the middle of the night, roughly one week later, because he was stupid and forgot the stack of exams he’d sworn he’d have graded by the morning, when he was bowled over by a whirlwind with long, honey colored hair pulled into a ponytail.  She screamed as she went down, and Laith… did not, but it was a near miss.

 

“Hi,” he said, a bit surprised.  Katie Holt.  Pidge.  How had he forgotten that she’d be showing up now?  Looking at her, he could only see her corpse, frozen like it had been when they’d recovered her body after she’d been blasted out of… no.  No, he wasn’t going there.

 

“Sorry,” Katie said.  Katie, because she wasn’t Pidge yet.  She scrambled to her feet.  “I didn’t mean to run you over, but I gotta…”  She glanced beyond Laith, then went pale.  “I gotta go!”  She took off running, but there wasn’t really anywhere to go, aside from down the hall that would dead-end in a classroom.  Desperate, she ducked into the girl’s bathroom that happened to be in the hallway.

 

Laith laughed a little and got to his feet just in time to find himself face to face with an irate Iverson.  “Did you see a little girl go through here?” Iverson barked at him.

 

Laith hesitated.  He could rat her out, or…  “Sorry,” he said with a small shrug.  “I didn’t see anything.  Maybe she got past you somehow?”

 

Iverson let out a roar of frustrated rage, then turned and stormed off in the other direction.

 

Laith laughed a little once he was out of sight and called, “You’re cool.  Get out while you can, Ms. Holt.”

 

The door opened, and Katie peeked out at him.  “Why are you helping me?” she asked, suspicious.  “And how do you know who I am?”

 

Laith froze.  At least he hadn’t fucked up and called her Pidge.  God, that would have been a nightmare.  He tried to think of something to say, but finally he just said, “I just didn’t think you deserved to get caught for looking for your brother.”

 

“Well,” Katie said, stepping around him cautiously.  “That’s… that’s really nice of you, person I don’t know, who Matt never mentioned.  I really appreciate it.”

 

Laith winked at her, and watched as her face did a funny little thing.  “You should go,” he said cheerfully, and gestured in the direction of the exit.  “Iverson might be lying in wait there if you give him too long.”

 

“Right,” Katie said slowly.  She took off down the hallway once more, then paused and turned back to him.  “Don’t… I mean, I don’t know if anyone’s told you this since you… whatever happened to your eye, but you probably shouldn’t try to wink.  It just looks… weird.”

 

And then she was gone, and Laith was laughing for the first time in forever, because he honestly had forgotten that he only had the one eye, and that winking would look very, very strange indeed.

 

“Oh, Pidge,” he said fondly, before continuing on his way to his classroom.  She would have thought it was hilarious, that he’d tried to wink.  He’d lost the eye around the same time that she’d died, actually, but he knew she would have laughed at him.  He could see it, in his mind, the sight of her cackling madly at him.

 

He swallowed the lump that formed in his throat.  His Pidge had been dead for over a decade, and he was going to make sure that this Pidge, if she even chose to sneak in under that name, would never die like that.

 

Never.

 

She deserved better than that.  They all did.

 

ooOOooOOoo

 

The fight that brought an end to Keith’s time in the Garrison came much sooner than Laith was expecting, and it happened in his class, of all places.  Someone, and Laith honestly couldn’t remember the name of the cadet for the life of him, made a mistake that Laith knew was going to go badly from the moment the words left his lips.

 

“You know, Shiro probably sabotaged the mission.  Lost it on purpose, so that he wouldn’t have to come back here and put up with Keith’s whiny ass.”

 

Laith’s eyes widened.  He was already moving to intercept Keith when the cadet went over the desk, going for the other cadet’s throat.  He wasn’t playing; he actually intended murder.  Laith spared only a second to wonder how the other instructor, the one whose place he’d taken, had dealt with it, and then he was dealing with an utterly enraged Keith, who was very, very good at close quarters combat, even if he wasn’t on Laith’s Keith’s level.

 

And young Keith might be good, but Laith had spent twenty years at war, and was much better than he’d been when he was younger.  It was the work of moments to get him off of the other cadet, who was choking and sputtering and gasping for breath, and took only a bit of effort to wrestle Keith to the ground.

 

“Calm down, cadet!” Laith barked, putting all the authority he had in his voice.

 

Keith struggled in his hold.  “Did you hear what that fuckwad said?” he roared.  He bucked, almost dislodging Laith because he hadn’t expected the strength of it.  “I’m gonna kill him!”

 

“No you aren’t, cadet,” Laith said grimly.  “Calm down or I’ll knock you out.” 

 

“Let me go!” Keith shouted.  

 

Laith held on, and in fact hauled him to his feet and marched him out of the room.  “I can’t, sorry,” he said as he marched him out.  “Someone get the cadet to the hospital, make sure that Keith didn’t do any permanent damage.  Everyone else, dismissed.”  He didn’t wait to make sure that his orders were followed; he was almost certain that they would be.

 

He took Keith right to Iverson’s office, where he knew the commander would be at this time.  Once there, he shoved Keith into the chair and said, quietly, “Now tell Commander Iverson what you just tried to do.”

 

Keith looked away, but began to speak, his voice shaking.  With every word, Iverson’s face grew more and more grim.  When Keith finally stopped talking, Iverson said, “You could have killed that boy.”

 

“That was kind of the intention,” Keith shot back.  “What he said about Shiro… you… I couldn’t just let that go!  Shiro wouldn’t have thrown the mission, Commander!”

 

“Nobody thinks he would have,” Iverson agreed.  “But Keith, I can’t have you at the Garrison if you’re going to try to kill someone for expressing an unsavory opinion.”

 

Keith’s head reared back like he’d been slapped.  “You’re throwing me out?” he asked, incredulous.  He glanced at Laith, and Laith met his gaze evenly.  “Instructor, you were there, you heard what he said!”

 

“I did,” Laith agreed.  Keith’s temper had been so terrible in the beginning; it really didn’t come as a shock that he’d nearly killed the other cadet.  “But you could have killed someone, and that’s really disproportionate response for what was said.”

 

Iverson, while Laith was talking, was on the phone with someone.  When he hung up, he cleared his throat.  “You’re very lucky that Cadet Williams is going to be okay, because otherwise I might be forced to put you in the brig instead of expelling you.  As it stands, Cadet, you give me no choice.  You’ve proven yourself to be resistant to therapy and to be a danger to your fellow students.  I’m afraid I have to expel you, effective immediately.”

 

Keith didn’t hesitate, just stood up fast enough that his chair clattered to the ground.  “Whatever,” he snarled.  He turned to stalk out, brushing past Laith.

 

And Laith… he couldn’t let him go like that, so angry, so depressed…  He just… he couldn’t.  “Keith!” he called, and jogged a few steps after him.

 

Keith paused, but didn’t turn around.

 

“Things are going to work out,” Laith whispered.  He wanted to tell Keith more, but he knew that Keith wouldn’t want to hear it.  He probably didn’t even want to hear Laith’s platitudes, either.

 

“No they won’t,” Keith said, and started to walk once more.

 

Laith watched him go, his heart breaking all over again.  Why did this have to be so hard?  He was doing the right thing; he knew he was.  He just… he hadn’t thought it would be so difficult to just watch as Keith’s life went to shit.

 

A small part of him was almost grateful that Keith had finally been expelled, because that meant that he wouldn’t have to watch him grieving anymore.  And didn’t that just make him feel like a heel?

 

“Laith?” Iverson called for him, jarring from his thoughts.

 

He returned to Iverson’s office.  “Commander?” he asked, respectfully, keeping all traces of his own internal conflicts from his voice.

 

“I have some paperwork you need to fill out.”

 

Paperwork.  Well, at least it would distract him, and hopefully keep him from doing anything stupid.  “You got it, boss,” he said, forcing cheer into his voice.

 

Only nine months and counting until Shiro crashed and the Blue Lion was discovered.  Laith could handle nine more months, he hoped.  After all, now the worst of it was over.


End file.
